


Self-Rescuing Princess

by imaginary_golux



Series: October Ficlet Challenge [21]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, Knight!Phasma, Princess!Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 09:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12340122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Prompt 11: Fantasy AUPhasma has been contracted to rescue the Lady Radiant, of Jakku. It doesn't go quite the way she was expecting.Prompt and beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	Self-Rescuing Princess

The gates to the tower are open, but no one challenges Phasma as she rides up to them, and through the gates she can hear shouting and the sounds of combat. She swings off her horse - a small courtyard is no place for a destrier - and hurries through the gateway, sword ready in her hand, only to find as she enters the courtyard that the battle is over. Men who must be the tower’s garrison are scattered about the courtyard in groaning heaps, and the victor stands in the center of the cleared space: a young woman, slender as a willow withe, with long brown hair braided tightly back and a quarterstaff as tall as she is held in one wiry hand. She fixes Phasma with a piercing gaze, brown eyes as hard as stone.

“...Are you by any chance the Lady Radiant, of Jakku?” Phasma asks.

“I prefer ‘Rey,’” the young woman replies. “But yes, that is the name I was given in my cradle.”

“I am Phasma, a knight errant. I have been sent by your lord father to rescue you,” Phasma says, looking around at the heaps of defeated soldiers. “But I see you have already made a good start on the matter.”

“So I have,” Lady Rey says, grinning fiercely. “There is nothing now to keep me here,” and she kicks one of the nearer soldiers as he starts to twitch, “so let us be away.”

“I have a palfrey for you,” Phasma says, and Lady Rey follows her out of the courtyard and swings up onto the palfrey gracefully, taking the reins when Phasma hands them to her.

They ride for a while in silence, Phasma towering over her charge - between the destrier and her own height, she towers over nearly anyone. At last, wracked with curiosity, Phasma asks, “How on earth did you induce them to allow you a quarterstaff?”

“I didn’t,” Lady Rey says at once. “I convinced them that I was harmless, and begged to be allowed to take my daily exercise in the courtyard. They grew complacent, and left some staffs lying about from weapons practice, so I took one.” She shrugs. “After that it was easy.”

“There must have been twenty soldiers in that keep,” Phasma says, eyes wide behind her visor.

“Yes,” Lady Rey agrees, baring her teeth in something that is not quite a grin. “My father did not mention my...talents, did he?”

“No,” Phasma admits. “But what talents could allow a single woman, unarmored, to defeat so many?”

Lady Rey chuckles. “Observe,” she says, and even as Phasma watches she seems to fade from view, until it appears that the palfrey’s reins are being held by thin air. After a moment, Lady Rey reappears. “It is very hard for anyone to fight what he cannot see.”

“Ah,” Phasma says, thinking about that for a while. “Is that not a little...dishonorable?”

Lady Rey shrugs. “They kidnapped _me_ ,” she points out, “and were holding me for that absolute _horror_ of a prince, Kylo Ren. And I am not a trained knight. I use the weapons which come to my hand.”

“Very...practical,” Phasma concedes.

“Precisely,” Lady Rey says contentedly.

*

That night they make camp in a small copse of trees, and wake to the unpleasant realization that a griffin has been using the same copse for a nest. Phasma manages to hold the creature off, despite being only half-armored and nearly blind in the darkness, until Lady Rey, invisible, gets around behind it and knocks the enormous animal out with a shrewd blow of her quarterstaff. “My thanks, Lady Rey,” Phasma says, leaning against a tree to catch her breath.

“It was my pleasure,” Lady Rey says, teeth very white in the moonlight as she grins. “Do you often have such adventures?”

“Often enough,” Phasma admits. “It is rather the point of being a knight errant, after all.”

“Hmmm,” says Lady Rey.

*

They defeat a giant two days later, with Lady Rey slamming her quarterstaff down on its toes to make it stumble and Phasma ready to take its head when it falls. Three days after that it’s a Black Knight at a ford, and Phasma - who is, after all, very good at her vocation - knocks him neatly off his horse and leaves him wallowing in the mud and swearing as they ride on. Then there’s a small dragon lairing near a village - Phasma distracts it and Lady Rey shoves a large boulder onto its head, pinning it for Phasma to finish off. A hydra in a nearby swamp takes nearly three days to kill, but between Phasma’s sword and the fire Lady Rey can apparently summon to her hands, they manage it.

They’re a day outside the borders of Jakku, having left a trail of defeated enemies in their wake, when Lady Rey says thoughtfully, “When my lord father sent you to rescue me, did he also bid you bring me home?”

Phasma thinks about it. “He bade me retrieve you from the tower,” she says at last. “But he did not _specify_ that I should bring you back to him. I believe it was implied.”

“Implied is not the same thing as commanded,” Lady Rey says, grinning fiercely. “And I am really quite a bad princess, you know. But I think I make a fairly good squire. Do you think you would be willing to let me stay with you a while longer?”

Phasma thinks about it, staring down at her small companion. Lady Rey is fierce and loyal and courageous, clever and hard-working and dangerous. It’s not quite _fitting_ for Phasma to have a princess as her squire, though.

“As my squire, no,” Phasma says at last. “But as my true companion? I should be honored by your company.”

Rey lights up, eyes wide with delight. “I can stay? We can fight more monsters together?”

“Yes,” Phasma agrees, smiling back. “I think we make a very good team.”

**Author's Note:**

> So Best Beloved and I are doing an October ficlet challenge. We each generated a list of pairings we'd be willing to write and a list of prompts we wanted the other person to write, and then traded prompts lists without knowing what the other person's pairing lists were. We'll be doing a ficlet each every day in October. Should be fun!
> 
> I am, as ever, imaginarygolux on tumblr.


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